Ruth and the sunset at the island of Dhiffushi, Maldives.
Where are Kevin and Ruth now? Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Where are Kevin and Ruth going next? Kuwait City, Kuwait on March 31st.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Bought a new laptop!

Yesterday was Amazon Prime Day and like many of you I was in the market for a great deal. My current laptop is only about two and a half years old, but it was a cheap ($248 USD, $311 CAD) laptop when I bought it and the processing power isn't very good. It still works fine, but I was on the lookout for something that can keep up with today's technology a little better.

So when I saw that one was coming on sale for Prime Day up here in Canada, I made a point of getting up at 4:00am to buy it!

And I got one. It turned out they must have had a big supply because it was still available the next day. Oh well. I would have been disappointed if I hadn't got up early and they had been sold out.

I bought an Asus 15.6" with an Intel i3 processor, 4GB ram, and 500 GB hard drive. Regular price up here was $550 CAD ($435 USD) and it was on sale for $385 CAD ($305 USD). And because it was shipping from out of province I didn't have to pay any provincial tax. But I still had to pay the 5% GST tax.

Our office computer here at the park broke down at the beginning of the year and it wasn't worth fixing. So I've been using my laptop with the park software to keep up with reservations and park business. This laptop would be totally fine for the park, so we've made an agreement to sell it to them for $150... a good deal for the park, and a good deal for me. And, I had a $70 credit with Amazon.ca from the tiny bit of affiliate sales we do, so with putting that and the $150 from the park towards the new laptop meant I was only out of pocket $184 for the new one!

Reviews on the new laptop say it offers a lot for the money, with a good 1080p screen and excellent speaker sound.

And, it's lightweight, coming in at 4.6 lbs.

So, that should arrive on Friday.


It was a little cooler for a change here at the park yesterday, so we took advantage of that to go for a short hike with Ruth's brother Colin and his girlfriend Brenda.

How can these wildflowers still be alive after three weeks with no rain??

Still some greenery in the coulee.

Climbing up for a view.

And the park is still looking pretty green as well. 
But of course we've had the sprinklers going 24/7.

And then, we actually got some rain! We had a downpour at about 7:00pm, and then a steady rain for a couple of hours after that. The farmers will be happy about that! Unfortunately, even with that rain, we are still under a fire ban that was instituted yesterday morning. And there is more heat and no rain in the forecast, so I doubt yesterday evening will be enough to remove the ban.

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Remember our kayak that we bought last fall? The one man version is on Deal of the Day today... great price for a fun and easily portable little kayak...


And in Canada, a great deal on a top quality waffle grill...





26 comments:

  1. Always fun to score a deal. I have to seriously think about either a new laptop or tablet or something. Waiting to get home to use the home PC is getting a bit old.
    Too bad we couldn't have given you some of all the rain we got in May and parts of June. The lake is still high.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Kevin loves finding deals like this! Now he can't wait to get the new laptop and try it out.

      Wouldn't it be nice if the weather could just equal itself out throughout the country! Kevin read somewhere that this spring/summer, Ottawa has averaged rain once every two days.

      Delete
  2. Nice views of the park! It's amazing how wildflowers are so resilient and once established don't need much water. My garden beds are full of native wildflowers. I love how low maintenance they are. Enjoy your summer days....September will be here before you know it!

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    1. We love hiking up to this view point of the park. It always looks neat from there.

      We are always surprised about how plants adapt to such dry conditions. We have tons of cactus in this area. I was actually thinking of digging some up and transplanting them in the garden that I made here in the park.

      Yep, our time already seems to be flying by, we are already at our halfway point here.

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  3. Paul has a Asus. It has been good to him for four years now. I probably just jinxed us.

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    1. I have an Asus as well and it is two years old and I did have a problem with it last year but the company took care of fixing it quickly and they were great to deal with, so that is always a good sign.

      Delete
  4. Gotta love a good deal like that not a problem take it while you can. I still have my Mac Book pro still works like new I bought in June 2009 was $1400.00 so far $175.00 a year no virus protection. And free upgrades.
    Enjoy your new laptop.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You know that Kevin loves to get a deal so he always has his eyes open for one. Glad you are happy with your Mac but for us we just aren't Mac people. We don't use virus protection either and have never had a problem but we are always careful with what sites we use and stay away from any click bait.

      Delete
  5. Ottawa can't go 3 days without rain, never mind 3 weeks!

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    1. You are having the summer that we had (didn't have) last year. It was such a wet one, although I think Ottawa has even had more rain than that!

      Delete
  6. We have many wildflowers that thrive after three months of no rain (New Mexico). A common wildflower here, the Desert Marigold (baileya multiradiata) doesn't like to be irrigated if you're growing it in your yard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It truly amazes us that some plants/flowers are so resilient to the dryness. I think I would loved to have some Desert Marigolds here at the park. The flowers that I have planted need to be watered every day and the ones in the pots have to be watered twice a day just about.

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  7. You are definitely the deal finder. Well done! Such a beautiful area your pictures show even with little rain. Glad to hear you got some to green things up. Those little wild flowers are obviously native plants and know how to handle it all.

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    1. We love "our" little oasis here, it really is beautiful! Yes, they are definitely native plants, we even have tons of cactus growing as well, they just don't grow to be big like the ones down south.

      Delete
  8. Sound is something most people don't check when buying. For us, that's important since we use our laptop as a television to watch live news (PBS) and movies as well as YouTube.

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    Replies
    1. Yep, we use Kevin's laptop for movies and shows as well, seeing that we don't have a TV, so sound is definitely important to us too! :-)

      Delete
  9. Gosh I wish we could have some of that rain. The fires continue.

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    1. The amount we got won't have made much of a difference to British Columbia's fires. It wasn't even enough to remove the fire ban from the park and now we are back to hot weather and no rain again. Sure do hope that British Columbia gets some much needed rain soon!

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  10. Too funny, I bought the same computer for my mom! As her "technical support person" I have been struggling with her old Windows XP clunker for too many years and yesterday's deal was just too hard to pass up! My son and husband both ran Asus for many years without problems.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, that is too funny! Glad to know that a techie person thinks it's a great computer as well. I have an Asus as well and have been happy with it after two years. My only issue is that I wish mine had a larger "hard" drive, mine is only 20.8GB. :-(

      Delete
  11. We bought an Asus too last week for the Company, I was very impressed. It came super highly recommended from a tech friend after we had chosen an more expensive HP model (because we didn't know how good Asus was).

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    1. Another happy customer! It's always good to hear when other techie people recommend the same brand name as what we just bought. :-)

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  12. Summer heat and no rain can spell disaster ... it's fire season. We've already experienced a few destructive fires in NorCal. Your park looks pretty nice.

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    1. Yes, and forest fires sure can be disastrous! Even with the rain we got Tuesday evening and night, it wasn't enough to remove our fire ban and it was very localized so some farmers in the area got the much needed rain for their crops but not enough for others. I saw a couple of fields of either peas or lentils already going yellow which is far too early for them. Hope we get some more rain soon but it isn't looking like it by the forecast.

      Delete
  13. Replies
    1. True, but we won't have Kevin's older one it will be staying with park.

      Delete

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